A Texas law, which bans abortions when the baby’s heartbeat can be detected at around 6 weeks, went into effect on Wednesday after the Supreme Court refused to rule on whether the law should be struck down.
“A controversial Texas law that bars abortions at six weeks went into effect early Wednesday morning after the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court failed to rule on pending emergency requests brought by abortion providers,” CNN reported. “The lack of judicial intervention means that the law — which is one of the strictest in the nation and bans abortion before many people know they are pregnant — goes into force absent further court intervention.”
“The Texas legislature passed the law as part of an effort to undercut the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which established a constitutional right to have an abortion before the point of fetal viability, generally understood to occur around 24 weeks of pregnancy,” SCOTUSblog wrote.
“Court watchers and people on both sides of the abortion debate kept vigil into the early hours of Wednesday morning, waiting for an order that never came from the justices,” SCOTUSblog added. “Many experts expected the court to act before midnight central time, when the law was scheduled to take effect. Instead, the court – at least for now – declined to block the law despite the fact that it defies Roe and Casey, the future of which are squarely at issue in a separate case, to be argued in the upcoming 2021-22 term, involving a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.”
In an attempt to not be blocked before enforcement, the Texas law authorizes civil – not criminal – penalties.
“In the novel legal strategy, the state Legislature designed the law to prevent government officials from directly enforcing it. The move was meant to make it much more difficult to bring a pre-enforcement challenge because there are not the usual government officials to hold accountable in court,” CNN added. “Instead, the law allows private citizens — anywhere in the country — to bring civil suits against anyone who assists a pregnant person seeking an abortion in violation of the ban.”
